


Scion of Kyra

by BunnyMoss



Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 4
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Archaeology, Crotchety Old Man Pagan, Fluff, Idiots in Love, Inspired by Indiana Jones, Intrepid Explorer Ajay, M/M, Smut, tomb raiding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:00:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23504248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BunnyMoss/pseuds/BunnyMoss
Summary: Pagan Min is one of the world's most renowned archaeologists. Or, he was, until he took an early retirement. He's lived a quiet life, unbothered and content to garden his roses and assist worldly scholars on the side. Things have been lovely. Or, they were, until one Ajay Ghale comes knocking on his door with a rather... shooty disposition and a business proposition. Which is, unfortunately, precisely how he finds himself travelling halfway across the globe with the boy, chasing after the fabled Scion of Kyra.
Relationships: Ajay Ghale/Pagan Min
Comments: 10
Kudos: 16
Collections: Pajay Fic Exchange 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fuzziestpuppy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fuzziestpuppy/gifts).



May 1st, 1940

Spring is in full bloom in the lovely Dorset countryside this time of year. Absolutely lovely weather, perfect for spending hours out in the manor gardens pruning flowers and enjoying what sunny weather England can afford in the afternoons. Which is to say, this is precisely what he would love to find himself doing just about now if he weren’t caught up inside poring over some dusty old tome that arrived later than expected from the Institute last week. Page after page of blathering bullshit about bones and cobblestones and dithering lore he's read before in a different manuscript. But they want his _expert opinion_ on this old thing, and they pay good money in advance in hefty sums, and damned if it doesn’t pay the bills round here. Gardening can wait.

Since when did _Archaeologist_ become _Glorified Research Assistant_ , anyhow? He certainly didn't spend hours toiling at _Ballana_ or _Hetpet's Tomb_ or supervising at _Oss Vorstengraf_ to find himself sat here in his nice little manor playing maester’s pet for the fuddy-duddies who have no proper training.

 _Pagan Min_. World-renowned archaeologist, retired at forty-eight with more money and luxuries than he'll ever know what to do with. Washed up and burned out in his prime. What a bright and shining star… _bah._

He sips at his tea, long-since cold and bitter, and flips over another moth-eaten page, adjusting his spectacles to peer down at the fine handwriting scrawled in the margins between the typeset. Someone has had quite a bit of fun blathering on in Italian just about all through this book. He’ll be damned if he's going to translate it all himself, that’s _not_ what they’re paying him for. Someone knocks at the front door, startling him just enough that he peers up from his work. He's not expecting anyone. They'll leave if he doesn’t answer.

He lifts his teacup up again, inspecting the chilled amber of his Darjeeling as it swirls in the white porcelain, and there comes another knock. More urgent. _God damned persistent_.

“Mister Min! Visitor!” that blasted assistant of his calls from the kitchen, as though he doesn't hear the sharp rapping on the front door.

“ _Yes_ , Miss Rotenberg, acute observation skills,” he grumbles loud enough that she can hear him, but of course-

 _“What?”_ she bellows back, that booming Russian brogue that would be better suited for a battlefield or a noisy factory floor than his quiet sprawling manor.

“Tell them I’m not home, Vanya!” he sighs, slamming his teacup down on the table with such force that he nearly cracks it.

 _“You sound like you're home, Mr. Min!”_ comes a muffled call from outside the door, expectantly.

Nobody understands a hint when it’s dropped, apparently! Pagan pinches the bridge of his nose just below his reading glasses, inhaling sharply and metering his patience. He can hear Vanya’s heels tapping on the wood floor as she heads for the foyer, and _at the least_ , she makes an effort to follow through with his request. As he pulls himself from his desk chair and slams the book shut, he can hear the woman dutifully explaining that _Mister Min is not home at the moment, nor does he take visitors when he is_ , but their visitor protests. Loudly. Right past his assistant and into the front hall as though there's not a six-foot leviathan of a woman standing in the doorway.

_“I'm here about a certain artifact, Mr. Min.”_

That alone gets his attention. He stiffens without even realizing it, bristling with a hiss through his teeth as he tries to force himself to be delicate and deliberate with the process of removing and folding up his reading glasses. It's a nice attempt at poking the bear, but _he's still not home_. Not for any old stranger shouting things into his manor in the middle of the afternoon unannounced.

“…Pagan your visitor _really_ wants to speak with you,” Vanya says suddenly, urgently, and there's an edge to her voice he doesn’t like at all.

If there's one thing about her, she doesn’t startle without good cause.

Does he still have his pistol? Tucked away in that little compartment just under the desk? Is this one of those situations where he's going to need it? Do vagabonds even burgle washed-up Archaeologists for their dusty old clay pots and copper coins and mended relics? Surely any of the furniture in the house is more valuable than the artifacts he's got scattered around. No, preposterous, he can’t possibly be in danger. Can he?

Better to get the gun then, just to be safe.

He drops to a squat beside his work desk, his fingers wandering deftly beneath the woodwork until he finds just the indentation he's looking for. A little hook of his finger, a sharp tug, and the compartment drops-

 _“Pagan?!”_ Vanya keens, blatant worry in her tone now.

There's the pistol. It's loaded, still in good shape. If anything, it'll be a good persuasive assistant if this doorstep deadbeat won't leave without a fight and Miss Rotenberg can’t do her part. This is _not_ how his Wednesday afternoon should be going, and _by god_ he's owed some good brandy and a long nap in the sun when all this is sorted.

“Oh blast it all, tell him to hold his bloomers in a bunch, I'll be there momentarily,” Pagan calls, even as he's silently creeping down the side hall, taking the long way.

 _Just to be safe_. No use charging headlong into whatever this is.

As he pads round the corner, taking care to avoid the squeaky floorboards, he hears two distinct sounds in almost rapid succession, both of which echo through the front hall like bombs dropping in his foyer.

Vanya gasps, sharp and guttural and abjectly horrified, and the hammer on an old revolver is slowly, carefully cocked.

_No, no, nonono—_

He takes off skittering down the last length of the hall, squeaky hardwood be damned, fumbling frantically to ready his own weapon. Miss Rotenberg is hyperventilating, pleading near hysterics, their visitor hasn’t said a word – mysterious son of a bitch – and he's just nearly there—

_Bang!_

_“God almighty!”_ Pagan yelps as he skids into the wall, careening into the foyer with hell on his heels.

_She's dead he shot her all because you're a grumpy old bastard who won’t take mysterious afternoon visitors for tea and now you'll have to clean the bloodstains off the floor and call her family in St. Petersburg and…_

_“Svyatoy trakh!”_ Vanya barks, sprawled out ass over tin cans on the floor, her wild curls blown every which way.

“What in the devil is going on here?!” he cries, clutching his chest as he heaves with anxious breath, “put that gun _down,_ boy!”

In the doorway stands a young, wiry fellow, tan of skin with raven hair, black eyes like a hawk that watch him with such wary disdain that he might just burst into flames if he stares at one part of him for too long. His hands are shaking something fierce, which probably explains the fortunate misfire, but his posture means business. He cocks his revolver again and takes aim at his assistant on the floor as she's gathering up her skirts and she lets fly a stream of expletives in that guttural native tongue of hers.

Pagan levels his pistol straight at that scruffy face in the doorway, aimed right below the wide brim of his trilby hat.

“I'm not gonna shoot her if you just agree to talk for a few minutes,” his unwelcome visitor says.

American. He's American by that accent, even if his looks betray him.

“I'm certainly not inclined to think you're good on your word, mister-…" he draws on the word, fishing for some sort of name, some sort of introduction.

“AJ.”

_How trite._

The boy is still aimed squarely at Vanya's chest, and so he’s damn well not putting his gun down either. And _damnit_ , he could be out there in the garden right now pulling weeds and pruning the roses like none of this ever happened.

 _“Well_ , Mister AJ, I think this is a hell of a way to appeal to someone in their own home,” he says, straightening up and eyeing Vanya sideways, “I should like it very much if you'd apologize to my assistant here and-"

_Bang!_

_“Blyat! Ya uvolilsya s raboty!”_ Miss Rotenberg hollers, staring down a bullet hole blown straight through her skirts between her bent knees, mouth agape, “Mister Min tell him to stop!”

“Talk. Now. To me,” AJ demands as he stands his ground, turning to look straight down the barrel of Pagan’s gun.

This boy has to have a death wish. Or he’s simply stalling for something. He’s got nothing to lose but time and precious daylight by hearing him out, and everything to gain (and one assistant to afford a generous holiday bonus to this year). What’s so damn important that warrants waving a gun around in his foyer at two o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon?! If this is about that incident with the field researcher in Belgium...

“Fine, fine, sir, I’m happy to talk. But please, heaven’s mercy, _stop_ putting holes in my floorboards, will you?” Pagan pleads, holding his hands up in surrender.

AJ’s brow furrows as he rakes him over, and he holsters his revolver on his hip before crossing his arms, regarding him with almost calculated apathy. It’s a start, at least. At this rate, perhaps he’ll be able to put a fresh kettle on to boil and have a pot of tea ready for supper and an early retirement to bed for the night. If he’s _really_ lucky, he’ll still have some daylight left over to sit outside for a spell.

“Just give me one moment, if you please, while I get poor Miss Rotenberg situated, since you’ve up and given her the fright of her life,” he sighs as he potters over to help collect his assistant off the floor.

Poor thing, she looks more angry than anything else, and rightly so. He can feel AJ’s gaze burning into his back as he gets her dusted off and sets her straight, patting her on the shoulders halfheartedly. He’ll buy her a new dress over the weekend when he can, or give her the money for one.

“Mr. Min I’m here to talk about the Scion of Kyra,” AJ grumbles impatiently.

“A _moment_ , please, I said!” Pagan snaps back, causing Vanya to flinch, “sorry dear.”

Really, truly, the boy is just standing there like dead weight. His presence is becoming absolutely rankling, and the poor woman is just about ready to lunge past him and punch him herself by the looks of her. She's all fired up and flushed behind that face full of more freckle than facial feature.

“I came all the way from America for this and I-” the human lump in the foyer tries to pry.

“ _And_ you will wait another five minutes while I get myself and my assistant in order after you barged in here and shot up the place like a would-be assassin with no aim. You will leave your revolver on the floor, you will take yourself straight down the hallway to your right, and you will wait outside in the garden behind the house. Understand?” Pagan growls, turning on his heel and pacing over to stand nose to nose with the impatient shit.

“Sure. Fine,” he concedes, surrendering his weapon and placing it on the floor beside him.

He has to physically restrain Vanya as AJ shuffles by, listening to her snarl in his ear as he shoulders back the veritable beast of a lady. Only when the back door can be heard closing behind him as he exits the house does he let the woman go, and by then she's deflated a good bit.

“Heavens… let’s get you some tea and get you on your way home, Miss Rotenberg,” he sighs, steering her off towards the kitchen as his eyes linger back too long on those bullet holes in his nice parquet floor.

-

_Scion of Kyra..._

He's heard that name before, somewhere. But where? Not in any of his old books, and not whispered among his colleagues at the Institute. And what, rightly, does he _mean_ by scion? Certainly not a propagation or a prized trimming of some mythical tree… that boy is _not_ a gardener. And furthermore, no horticulturalist he's ever met on this green earth would ever be so passionately inclined to bring a _gun_ into a conversation about _tree trimmings_.

But why then does Pagan still have a pistol tucked in the back of his pants as he bustles about the kitchen making himself a second cup of tea long after Vanya has left?

 _Ah_. Yes. Because he’s traveled the world and seen for himself the kinds of ruffians who _do_ bring guns to knife fights and intellectual discussions. Academic he may be, fool he is not, and this is precisely why he keeps his pistol locked away under his desk for later use. Because boys like AJ don't play nice, and they don't come knocking on the doors of cozy countryside manors just to chat up retired gentlemen about their rose bushes.

“I was a goddamn archaeologist,” Pagan grumbles to himself as he drops a sugar cube morosely into his steaming cup of earl grey.

That must be it then… he _did_ say artifact earlier. But what sense would that make? A scion isn’t a _thing_ , not like that. Well, best to ask him, then. All this faffing about, worrying about the guest in his garden won't do him any good if he doesn't actually go out and deal with the guest in the garden.

He sets two scones neatly on a little plate and adds it to the tea tray with his cup and saucer, takes care to get a cup of steaming water ready with a selection of tea sachets for his mysterious visitor, and even goes so far as to offer up cream in a little pitcher. Really now, he’s being generous. Optimistically, AJ may already be gone, kept waiting for too long and grown bored of roasting in the sun out back. But he’ll be damned, there’s the boy, sprawled out in one of his Adirondack chairs with his hat pulled over his face, hands folded over his stomach. He doesn’t budge an inch when Pagan comes rattling out with the noisy tea tray. Doesn’t even snuffle when he sets it down on the wooden table beside the chair.

For heaven’s sake he’s _napping_.

“You brought snacks?” comes an incredulous voice, muffled from beneath the felt of AJ’s trilby.

_Not napping._

“Just tea,” Pagan says, perching himself delicately on the edge of the other chair adjacent to his, “I thought a hot cup of _camellia sinensis_ might soften your... _shooty_ disposition. Darjeeling? Oolong? English Breakfast? I even have a brick of Pu-erh in the cupboard if that’s more your taste.”

“Coffee.”

He blinks slowly, processing the outright punctuation of the word. How does one make an _f_ sound so sharp like that? Couldn’t replicate it if he tried.

“No tea then, _right_. There’s a scone for you, boy, if you want it,” he waves his hand dismissively, taking up his own porcelain cup with a little shrug of delight.

“So, you lied,” AJ’s voice kicks up an inquisitive notch as he sits up, lifting his hat from his face, “and you do in fact have snacks.”

Lord in heaven, the volume in that jet-black hair of his. He looks like a god-damned cockatoo, or someone’s fluffy little faithful puppy. Now that he can get a proper look at him, Pagan surmises that he can’t be older than eighteen, with his sparse stubble and barely-there mustache. No, there’s no way this boy is a _man_.

“I am offended that you would imply that I’m prone to lying, _and_ that you sit here and try to tell me that a perfectly good scone is nothing more than an afternoon _snack-”_

“Can we get down to business or what?” he interrupts, swiping the plate and both of its scones all for himself.

Oh, this is not going to fly. The gall of this cocky little shit, waltzing in here like he owns the damn manor – like he could even afford the mortgage on the place! Pagan scoffs, crossing his arms, and he slides back fully into the lawn chair, making himself as visibly comfortable as possible before continuing. Anything to draw this out a little more, because _now_ it’s a game. He will certainly not cower down without a fight when there’s mischief to be had.

“Listen, boy, you can piss right off with the tough guy façade. I’ve sent the help home, it’s just you and me. I’m not sure who you’re trying to impress, but you’re only succeeding in boiling my blood,” Pagan growls, dropping his hands to the chair and drumming his fingers on the armrests.

AJ’s jaw drops, and he shakes his head a little, clearly befuddled. _Good_. Let him reel a little.

“Care to tell me why you attempted to shoot my assistant if you had no intention of following through with it?” he continues, raising a challenging eyebrow over his teacup as he takes a long swill.

“I knew you wouldn't take me seriously if I didn’t make a strong first impression. I heard you myself back there in your cozy little study, griping at your assistant. You would never have come to the door, and I could never have had a chance to talk with you,” the boy shrugs matter-of-factly.

And, truth be told, he’s right. He's _absolutely_ right. Of all the self-imposed rules Pagan has kept over his lifetime, it's the strict no-unexpected-guest rule that's kept his life the most comfortably predictable and monotonous. Just the way he's liked it since home has become his primary place of work. Keeping rules like this has certainly prevented him from coronary-inducing afternoons like today. With a sigh, he rakes his hand through his hair and offers AJ a feeble little shrug.

“You’ve got me there,” he admits flatly, “but it’s all water under the bridge now, I suppose. Why don’t you tell me why you’re here? Why you’re _really_ here? What’s this talk about a scion?”

“The Scion of Kyra. You’re the great archaeologist Pagan Min, after all. You have to have heard of it,” AJ scoffs, and _my_ he’s never heard great used in the same sentence as his name and title before, “I’m here because they tell me you’re the expert on it. That you’re the best in the field, and because I need help finding it.”

Pagan looks him over, gaze hard and narrow, and _really_ tries to discern if he might be joking. His guest holds firm, contentedly chomping away at one of the two scones as he lets him consider his proposition. The whole damn thing is profoundly bizarre, if only because he’s never seen those laurels – best archaeologist? Bah.

“Three things. One – that is a crock of shit, and if you truly knew me, you’d know I’m far from the best option you have. Two – I have absolutely no idea what this artifact is, and quite frankly I don’t feel inclined to give a damn. Three,” he pauses, leaning forward to close some of the distance between them as he shakes a finger at him, “I’m curious to know why you’re seeking this artifact? I’m led to think you may be of the dishonorable sort, you know. Waving guns around, snatching up scones like an unlettered little heathen.”

Watching AJ wilt is somewhat of a little victory for him. No, truthfully, it’s a smashing triumph. He may as well have just been handed the keys to a Kingdom. The boy simply sits there, gasping like a fish out of water, mouth opening and closing as though he’s got everything to say and no way to get it out. Tiger’s got his tongue. Is he really so self-assured that he thought he could waltz into a stranger’s home like this and get the answers he wanted with little to no recompense required?

“I-… you... you’re _Pagan Min,”_ he stammers, as though this should clarify things, or perhaps soothe his own ennui over there, “they said you were top of your class in school. That you’ve supervised more successful digs than _anyone_ else out there right now! They swore left and right, honest to God.”

“Boy, I assure you wholeheartedly that I am not the man you think I am,” Pagan growls, terribly tired of his incessant pressing, “do you know why I’m retired at forty-eight? Take a wild guess. Anything, really, just _guess.”_

AJ sits, stoic and consternated, and cocks his head as his brow furrows. There’s a little scar nicked into the top of his left eyebrow, he notices. He wonders idly where he must have gotten it. But he doesn’t answer, no, he just sits and stares, polishes off his scone as he runs through some inner monologue or magna carta in that hot head of his. Thinking secret thoughts. A provocation this simple has broken him, apparently.

“Tough question, clearly. Alright, my answer is no, Mr-… you never gave me your last name, boy,” he pauses, waving off his own interruption, “so that I might politely dismiss you the _proper_ way. I’ve got _manners.”_

The boy’s face sours considerably and he grows very, very still as he sets the empty scone plate back on the tea tray. Pagan waits patiently, fingers steepled in his lap, and offers him his very best glittering smile. The grin that means _get the fuck out, please, before I toss you out by the seat of your pants._

 _“Gale,”_ AJ says, voice cracking, “AJ Gale.”

“Ah! No relation to the _Ghales_ , are you?” he says cheerily before he even realizes what’s slipped from his mouth, “very famous couple of- wait. _Wait.”_

Oh he can’t possibly be. That would make him easily twenty...six now, by the math in his head. Has it been that long? He looks so young! _Oh_ but he really does look so much like them, now that Pagan is really looking at him. It clearly must be coincidence, though.

Right?

“You caught me,” the boy admits sheepishly, shrugging his shoulders, “They mentioned your name a long time ago, when I was a kid. I figured if I tracked you down, you’d know more than I did about this whole ridiculous expedition of theirs.”

 _“...Ajay Ghale,”_ Pagan gawks, realization washing over him in a hot flush, pursued quickly by a rankling bitterness that warrants a hearty swill of his cooling cup of tea.

“Uh. Yeah. That’s how they said my name, at least. So you really did know them? You can uh, you can call me that if you want,” he cast his gaze downward, deflating so quickly he’s surprised he doesn’t cave in on himself.

Pagan shakes his head so vigorously that his crop of hair frushes across his forehead, tickling his brow. Not that he doesn’t know them, no, but that this whole situation has gotten entirely out of hand in such a short amount of time. But lamenting about his day gone south isn’t going to change much about it, is it? Ajay clears his throat impatiently, and he realizes he’s been sitting here dumbfounded for more than a little moment. The boy is hanging on his no, and not taking it for an answer, apparently. And is that even his answer, now that he’s had this bombshell dropped on him?

“How are your parents, Ajay?” he brings himself to ask, the most detached question he can form that won’t make him sound like such a calloused old windbag, “Still cavorting around the world chasing that fever dream of the _perfect_ tomb delve? Raiding old pyramids and barrows for precious treasure, I presume?”

What he expects is a hearty response, a cheery regaling of whatever he’s missed in the past fifteen years or so since he last saw them in Marrakesh. What he receives instead is a panicked sorrow sinking over the boy as he swallows thickly and looks hard at his own feet.

“You didn’t know?” Ajay murmurs, in an instant becoming someone so, so different from that proud, reckless intruder in his foyer, “Pagan, they disappeared years ago. They’re probably dead. It’s been ten years since I’ve heard from them.”

All at once, it feels as though the world has dropped out from underneath him, and all the same he’s being lifted up out of some deep well, hauled out by his shoulders until he can finally gasp for breath. It really should be disconcerting that this news comes as such a relief to him, but here he is, somehow coming out on top.

“I’m terribly sorry for your loss,” is all he can muster, trying to keep the giddiness from his voice, “They were phenomenal people.”

A lie, he’d think, but perhaps a truth to Ajay.

“I wouldn’t know that, really,” the boy shrugs dejectedly, “they dumped me with my Uncle Sabal and Aunt Amita in California when I was three years old and set out on their grand expedition to god knows where. I’d only get to see them maybe once every handful of years. It’s admittedly pretty nice to know someone who knew them well enough to form a proper opinion of them.”

 _Proper opinion..._ Ajay doesn’t want his proper opinion, that much he’s sure about. If he bothered to mention any of the number of bitter memories the mere mention of the Ghale name brings up, he’d likely push the boy right over some invisible ledge. No, it’s best to keep all that mum if he's got his right mind about him.

“Terribly sorry, boy, but where do I come into this grand scheme of yours? I'm having trouble connecting the dots,” Pagan waves his hand dismissively, “I’m a living man with a vague connection to your dead parents, and I'm inclined to think your pity story has absolutely no relation to this scion you want my help finding. They were seeking The Source, not this Kyrati fairytale.”

“You don't care that my parents are dead? When they spoke so highly of you?” the poor boy tries to press with irritation, probably trying to push his buttons.

“You don’t even know if they are, Ajay, or if they just decided they didn’t want the burden of a child getting in the way of their grand fame and glory?” he shoots right back, spitting forth the callous words before he even registers how harsh he's been, “or perhaps you're making all this up just to earn my pity?”

_Wrong answer._

Ajay leaps to his feet like he's been struck, visibly flinching away. He lingers on his feet, alive with frenetic hesitation, and clenches his fists open and closed. Like he's wanting his revolver something fierce right now, and missing it terribly.

“How _dare_ you, pompous fucking-"

“I'm _sorry_. That was out of line, even for my tastes,” Pagan backpedals, throwing his hands up in surrender.

His own pistol feels heavy and cold against his lower back.

“All I wanted was some goddamn help. This Source, it's the same thing,” Ajay snarls, taking several prowling steps towards him, “I've been trying to chase my parents for _years._ I’m almost _thirty_. I want to know if they found the one thing they devoted their life to. Honestly? I want to know if it was worth it for them to leave their son behind to fester. Maybe you don’t understand that pain, I don't know you. But _honestly_ the nerve of you-…”

The vitriol being channeled directly out of that snarling mouth slaps Pagan hard in the face, twisting right into his chest. Confrontation has never been a favorite pastime of his, least of all when he's on the receiving end of someone else's fury – and for good reason. Ajay is close enough that he can hear the wheeze in his breath, can see the trembling in his limbs. Clearly he's upset, but there’s a certain fear to him, too. He understands full well that he's going up against a man with a gun, poking that metaphorical bear. Not so nice being on the other end of the barrel, now.

And so he admits his defeat. He sets his teacup down firmly on the tray before rising to his feet, inhaling slowly through his nose. Careful, controlled emotions, slow movements.

_Don't spook the frightened animal._

“Ajay, my boy, I'll do it. I can't be the intrepid adventurer you want me to be, scaling mountains and spelunking in caves, but I'll offer whatever services I can,” he says, meeting the boy's eye steadily, “besides. I think you owe me fair payment for the repairs I'm going to have to make to the foyer floor. Bullet holes are hard to patch in that type of wood, you know.”

Ajay doesn’t laugh at his weak attempt at a joke.

“You know I’m not so sure,” he says flatly, challenging him with those hawk eyes, “you say you're not one of the best archaeologists. You don't even know about this scion. Maybe you’re just a hack.”

That does it. That prods the right button, and Pagan puffs right up like a porcupine, preening and turning his nose up in disdain.

“I will have you know, sir, that I only meant to self-deprecate in the hope that I would turn you away,” he growls, thrusting his chest out, _and furthermore I-"_

There's a finger. On his lips. Pressing firmly, hushing him up.

Ajay has closed the distance between them, his arm extended, his index finger so brazenly in his personal space. Pagan blinks owlishly, his mouth agape such that Ghale would only have to flick his finger to stick it right in if he felt like violating even more of his space.

“I'm joking,” the boy says, “please come with me. My offer still stands, I definitely need your help.”

“Wew I haff neber-" Min starts, and promptly swats his hand away from and off of his face.

“Well I have _never_ met a man so curiously intrusive as you, boy. But I suppose I can’t take back my acceptance now, can I? Very well, shall I meet you somewhere on our departure date?”

Arms crossed casually, loose posture, the boy looks positively at ease now that this situation has diffused so suddenly. _Good for him_. That makes one of them.

“We leave first thing tomorrow. I know which plane to catch,” Ajay grins, all pearly whites and flushed freckles, a complete turnaround from moments ago.

 _Tomorrow. First thing_. That certainly drops like a dead weight between them.

First thing tomorrow means he's going to have to leave poor Miss Rotenberg a letter on the counter, if she even bothers to come back at all after today's turn of events. First thing tomorrow means he'll have no time to bother hiring anybody to tend his garden while he's gone. First thing tomorrow means-

“I suppose you're going to ask me if you can stay here at the manor for the night,” he finishes his thought aloud, and receives only a vigorous nod as confirmation.

“I left my suitcase on your front porch,” Ajay says cheerily.

“…of _course_ you did.”


	2. Chapter 2

May 29th, 1940

“ _This_ is Puerto Ayachucho?”

Ajay shakes his head, walking just ahead of him down the docks, on a beeline for the shore. They’re here to see a man named Willis about a certain map, their ticket to the next puzzle piece In this great goose-chase they've been stumbling along for the past month.

“Were you expecting a big fancy port city, Pagan?” the boy quips over his shoulder, “we're inland and Colombia is across the river. No big ships or breezy ocean. I've told you this a thousand times.”

“Well you certainly neglected to tell me that the Orinoco River went _this_ far into Venezuela. I haven’t brought the proper clothes for this heat!” Min exclaims, hauling his trunk along behind him with great melodramatic tugs.

The past 28 days have been, for lack of a better word, _cathartic_. Sure, the first week he'd thought at almost every junction that he might strangle the boy. Getting out of Britain expediently had been a right struggle, and tensions had nearly dissolved their trip before it even began. But after that first hurdle, things improved tenfold in a matter of days. Perhaps it'd been the giddiness of knowing they were on foreign waters, far beyond the U-Boat blockade and thusly much less in imminent danger of immolation at sea. Or perhaps it had been the discovery that they were not entirely dissimilar at all in their mutual love of _exploring_. Oh, they've talked at length for hours almost every evening about their dream destinations, and bucket list trips.

After all, isn’t that what had gotten Pagan into his field in the first place? He could see the world on someone else's dime and dig up fame and fortune along the way, he'd thought, when he was young and naïve. Now here he was at forty-eight living vicariously through all of the Ghale boy's aspirations. It's utterly charming, and he finds himself hanging on every mention of his dreams, craving to see how his eyes light up when he does.

“You’re allowed to take your shirt off, you know. That's… that’s okay when it's hot, you don't have to be in a fucking button-up everywhere you go,” Ajay sighs as he falls back to walk beside him.

“Nonsense, boy, we have to make good first impressions. If there’s anything I've learned in my day, it's that if you want _anything_ from a foreign stranger, you make yourself look as much like a blundering fool as possible,” Pagan says, holding his head high, and Ghale gawks at him as though he's just broken out in a different language entirely, “if you play dumb, they’ll let their guard down. Besides. Better that than barging into the man's house guns blazing, demanding answers.”

The boy shoulders him hard, all play and no hostility, but the added weight of his pack strapped to his back nearly topples him over onto the gravel as they mount the river bank towards the town.

“I apologized for that six times already. And yes I’ve counted. I’m not apologizing again,” Ajay snorts as he grabs his arm to keep him from wobbling right over.

Bless the boy, he's really grown on him.

-

Willis is expecting them, it turns out, despite the dubious ETA they'd given him via telegraph when they hit the coast further North. They’re two days early, and _somehow_ the man is preemptively standing on his doorstep in the poorest part of town, grinning like a smug bastard. All tawny hair and the sort of beard trim that screams _American Undercover_. And all it takes is for him to open his mouth and greet them to confirm that, yes, he's as foreign here as they are.

_There goes the play-dumb scheme._

“AJ Gale, son of Mohan and Ishwari Gale, twenty-six years old. Kyrati national, raised in the good old U-S-of-A. Still sleeps with a blanket his Aunt Amita told him came from his mom, hovers over the toilet when he uses it because he’s afraid of germs and getting his ass bit by Toilet Piranhas,” he says with all the confidence of a prosecutor, and Ajay stiffens considerably beside him in the grimy street.

 _“Toilet Piranhas?”_ Pagan whispers with a snicker, receiving a sharp elbow to his ribs in response.

“And Pagan Min, formerly Min Gang the Younger, forty-eight years old. Born in Kowloon to a British mother, and raised as a dual citizen between Hong Kong and England,” Willis interrupts firmly, “can’t beat his meat without closing all the windows in the room. Forced into early retirement because he murdered one of his assistants while on the job at _Oss Vorstengraf_ , sold his drug lord father to the authorities in exchange for zero prison time.”

That smug, haughty look on his _fucking face_ as Pagan’s stomach drops through his shoes and every notion of the English language leaves his mind in a hurry is infuriating. Ajay looks to him with wide, questioning eyes, and dares to put a little distance between them with a long sidestep.

“You did _what?”_ the boy whispers, “how’d you do it? Why’d you do it?”

 _“Jesus Christ,_ I stabbed him with my pen when he spilled the last cup of my good _lapsang souchong_ on an incredibly important field report. How did you _know this?”_ he snarls at Willis, who just shrugs his shoulders casually.

“I have my people. Can’t be too safe. Now are you coming inside or what? You need my help, don’t you?”

Pagan looks to Ajay, trying not to dwell on the fact that his bitter little secret has been laid on the table quite brazenly by this intrusive stranger. He was going to tell the boy anyway, all those weeks ago back at his manor, sitting out in his garden trying to deter him from ever initiating this grand adventure of theirs. But now it’s aired like dirty laundry, and there’s nothing to be done about it. Squeezed out like honey from the comb, so to speak. Can’t rightly put it back in, now can he? Willis turns on his heel and enters his home before either of them can answer, leaving the door wide open as an invitation.

“Pagan?” Ajay says impatiently, “are we going?”

“You're not shocked by what you’ve learned of me?” Min asks as he stumbles a few steps forward towards the porch.

“If you knew what I had to do to survive on my last expedition…” he murmurs, a wily grin spreading over that stubbled face of his.

The surprising warmth that flushes through him at the sight of that smile sends a shiver down his spine. That's certainly not the answer he was expecting, nor is it the response he thought he'd have to that wry flash of the boy's teeth. Perhaps a month of traveling with him has brought them closer than he'd thought.

“You never cease to surprise me, you know that?” Pagan grins right back at him, breathless and just a little giddy.

Together, the two of them trudge up onto Willis's porch and into his tiny little house. For being so sparsely furnished inside, looking almost like a hideout more than a household, the room feels incredibly claustrophobic. Ajay must feel much of the same, for he stays rather close to his side, arms brushing as he lingers in his personal space. Willis is sat on one of only two chairs in the room, puffing away at what smells like a rather expensive cigar. His beady eyes watch them with acute scrutiny, lingering on the space between their bodies for a touch too long before he speaks.

“So what brings you to Venezuela? Don’t answer that, I already know. I'm just making small talk. But you're not here for small talk, are you? Listen, I have the map you want. But I'm looking to get in on a cut your profits from whatever you find out there in the jungle, _capiche?”_ their host says in perhaps the thickest American accent he’s ever heard – and that’s saying something.

“That's not at all what we agreed on,” Ajay growls beside him, “we're giving you the money you asked for, and taking the map, and that's it. That's all there is to it.”

There's such a commanding finality to his voice that Pagan suddenly feels terribly inadequate just _standing there_ gawking at Willis, a little dumbstruck. And so he nods vigorously in support of what the boy has said. He even manages a vaguely non-threatening ‘Yeah!’

“Sorry Mr. Gale, but that's my offer, and those are my terms. I can make a lot more money selling this to a higher bidder and it's best not to put all your eggs in one basket, you know?” Willis waves a hand dismissively and puffs away at his stogie, “information don't come free down here where the sun don't shine. Can’t keep up with my ex-wife’s extensive shopping list if I don’t have the money to send home to New York, my friend.”

The air in the stiflingly hot little room grows terribly cold as the two of them bristle up, exchanging sidelong glances at each other, but he continues before they can get a word in edgewise. Pagan figures he must like the sound of his own voice too much to bother shutting the hell up for once.

“You know, in lieu of the map, I'd be more than willing to help out a true patriot such as yourself,” he raises his eyebrows at Ajay, standing up from his chair and strolling in their direction, “in person, that is. I think I'd much rather see my name in the papers than on a royalty check from you. Just imagine. ‘Willis Huntley aids world famous archaeological power couple in discovering long-lost relic.’ Has a nice ring to it, right? Scratch the map, boys, _that’s_ my offer, on my terms.”

_The nerve of him…_

Ajay puts his hands up in surrender, opening his mouth to negotiate, but he stops himself and looks right at Pagan instead, clearing his throat.

“Do we?” he whispers, “I really don't wan-"

 _“Mister Huntley,”_ Pagan interrupts his partner as he takes a step forward, brushing past Ajay's shoulder, “I don’t think we need another mouth to feed on this expedition. Besides, you have no field experience, I'm sure. We need experts on this delve, not thrill seekers.”

_Wrong answer._

Willis snuffs out the latter half of his cigar against the wooden table beside him and runs his fingers through his shaggy hair, pursing his lips thoughtfully. But those eyes of his burn with such intense scrutiny that he's sure the man is trying to light them on fire with just a glare. He closes the final few steps between them and sizes right up to Pagan – _wrong decision_ – and has to crane his neck to look up and meet his eye. Had he not realized the height difference before trying to pick a bone with him?

“Listen here you poncy sonofabitch, this talk is mano y mano, pardon my French,” Huntley growls, puffing up his chest like that should intimidate him.

Pagan stands tall, immobile, holding his ground against Huntley’s useless onslaught of weak insults. Beside him Ajay snickers, clearly enjoying this little bout of showmanship.

“- and full offense, Mr. Min, I don’t need a foreigner's opinion muddying up the waters, if you catch my-"

_Bang._

Willis leaps back, tucking his knees up and dancing on his feet in surprise as a bullet blows a hole in the floor between his feet. Even Pagan flinches, thrown right back to that whole fiasco in his foyer a month ago.

“Shut the _fuck_ up,” Ajay snarls, holding the smoking gun that so insistently interrupted their little interlude.

“Boy, you could have shot _my_ feet, for heaven's sake!!” Pagan cries, throwing his hands up and clutching at his chest as Willis stumbles back a few steps.

“The map, Willis. Get it. And give it to me. I have five more bullets. I'll make you fucking dance,” the boy barks, ignoring Pagan's yelping.

Miraculously, Huntley does exactly as instructed, nearly tripping over himself in his rush to get the map in question. When his back is turned, Ajay affords a winning grin in Pagan's direction, flashing those pearly whites endearingly, and to see him smile so wide makes his heart thunder like no other. God damn if he hasn't been hanging on every opportunity to see him smile like that. Beautiful boy, needling those soft fuzzy fingers into his heart so easily.

Willis returns with the map in hand, and cuts a wide berth around Ajay as the boy trains the gun on him again. Despite everything proving the contrary, he still finds himself wondering if the boy wouldn’t legitimately shoot the man. His aim is spot on, apparently, and he's confident that he wouldn't miss the first shot. Their host stuffs the map hastily into Pagan's awaiting hands, his beady eyes trained on Ghale warily.

“Get the fuck out of my house, both of you,” Huntley hisses, though there's not much threat to his voice, “before I turn you over to the authorities, you yak-fucking limp-dicked-“

Ajay has grabbed his arm and hauled him out onto the front porch before Willis can even finish hurling his creative insult in their faces. As they stumble into the street, he can’t help but to dissolve into laughter as adrenaline takes over. The boy is still hanging onto his arm, even long after they’ve turned down the corner nearby, and it takes Pagan longer than it probably should to realize this. His palm is warm and his fingers are strong where they curl around the inside of his bicep, he can feel the heat even through the fabric of his shirt. And when at last he peeks aside at him, both of them still snickering, the sight of Ajay's freckled face attached to the sensation of the boy clinging to him sends all kinds of alarms blaring in his head.

He hasn’t put thought into it before, about that tingling in his chest every time Ghale draws near. But now it's startlingly clear – he _likes_ this.

Good god, he likes _Ajay_.

He's far too old for petty crushes, he's not a young schoolboy pining for his friends any more. But he’s spent the better part of a full month with the boy and not once have they fought over anything for long enough to wound each other. It's almost alarming how much of a one-eighty they’ve made, but perhaps some relationships just don’t naturally bear strife.

“Are you… going to let go of me?” Pagan asks at last, his voice coming out more hoarse than he'd intended, “I mean, you don’t have to but…”

“I… didn’t even realize I was hanging off of you, I’m sorry man,” Ghale clears his throat and releases his arm rather suddenly, “no harm done.”

The immediate separation from him, the absence of that warm palm pressed into his forearm, sends a very jarring spike of regret right through him.

“I'm, uh-" he pauses, faltering in his stride and coming to a stop in the middle of the street, “actually would you mind, maybe taking my arm back up again?”

Ajay turns back to him, blinking once or twice with wide eyes, his lips parted, and he raises his scarred eyebrow in question. Pagan simply shrugs sheepishly, trying not to look too much a fool in his presence, and he holds out his arm for the taking. Mercifully, the boy shuffles back to him and takes up his arm with a giddy little smile and a soft flush to his cheeks.

_Oh, he's sinking too deep_

-

“Damnit Pagan, does it say right or left here?”

Ajay swipes his kukri across another patch of vines across their path, cussing under his breath as he ducks a falling bundle of them, and Pagan snorts in response. They've been at this for hours, whacking through the thick, dense Venezuelan jungle in search of a specific tributary marked on Willis's map. It could be easy, sure, they could just follow the left bank of the Orinoco upstream and branch off when they found the proper point. Or, that would have worked had they not figured out halfway through that trek upstream that this tributary was _underground_ somehow. How that works despite all logic is still up for debate, and they’ve been theorizing for _hours_. But both their journey and their discussion have been fruitless thus far.

Pagan turns the map in his hand, wiping away the sweat sticking his forehead with the back of his other arm, and he scrunches up his face as he tries to orient them. All the little marks he's made in passing haven't been very helpful in tracking their position, despite how hopeful he's been that they will be.

“Ah… we're at the enormous tree shaped like the letter ‘y', yes?” Pagan asks, and he looks up to see Ajay simply gesturing blatantly to the giant tree just ahead in the clearing.

“Yep,” the boy draws out flatly.

“Then it's left. We take the shorter branch of the Y,” he says as he squints to discern the map a little clearer.

He broke his reading spectacles ages ago, when they'd first entered the jungle.

“The small branch is on the right side, though,” Ajay turns back, raising an eyebrow, “are you telling me—what was that…”

Both of them perk up, but Pagan can't hear a damned thing over the noisy din of jungle animals and insects chattering all around them. Ghale seems to be alarmed by some noise off in the distance, back towards the way they came. He appears to be rather spooked, but when he doesn't seem to hear whatever it was he picked up on the first time, he blinks in bewilderment.

“The map says to go left at the shorter branch,” Pagan says, picking right up where they left off.

“Pagan. Look at the tree. Where the path splits, the shorter, smaller branch is on the _right_ side,” Ajay asserts, though he seems much more distant now as he continues to stare off into the jungle, “I swear I heard some loud-ass roar or something.”

“Jaguar then, I'm sure,” he shrugs pulling the bandana from his pocket to scrub at his sweat-dampened face, “let's just take the smaller branch, alright? We'll go right.”

Ajay shakes his head and reaches out to snatch the map from Pagan’s hand, mumbling to himself and mocking his accent. _Fucking jah-gyu-ahr…_

“What if the tree grew larger since this map was made? Like. That's my dad's handwriting. And this would have been a handful of years ago. Maybe the jungle had a lot of rain and the branch grew and now the smaller one is the bigger one? So it was left all along, and-"

In the distance, but not terribly far off, an almost human-like bellow pipes up from the brush, scattering the nearby birds in the trees as they chatter and squawk in alarm. He _definitely_ heard that one. But there's no rustling through the foliage, no angry footsteps, no prey sprinting away in flight for their life. Perhaps they're safe? There's no way any jungle animal would pursue them so noisily. Things here _stalk_ , they don't _chase_.

“I don't rightly like that,” Ajay winces, stepping closer to Pagan and reaching out to grab his bare arm.

For a moment he thinks that he's never been happier to have decided to take his button-up off in favor of his tank top. The gentle, almost fearful touch of the boy's fingertips on his bare skin makes him shiver with delight.

“I think perhaps we're alright, my boy. There, there,” Pagan says, patting his hand tenderly where it grips him, “we'll go left, and keep on moving, alright? Better to get away from whatever that was.”

Ajay nods vigorously and stares down at their pressing hands for a long moment. He sees the boy swallow thickly, hears the little click of his throat. Is he… does he… feel something too? No, couldn’t be. Squash that down and forget it. Ghale opens his mouth to say something just as another roar tears from the underbrush, and this time, _there's movement_.

Through the thick cover around them, he can hear thundering footsteps. Truly, _thundering_. Like an elephant is crashing through the trees at high speed. Which can't be possible, not this deep in the jungle. An ape, perhaps? A very large, very angry gorilla maybe?

“Holy shit!” the boy bellows, yanking on Pagan's arm hard, “what the fuck is that?!”

Min whips his head in the direction Ghale is pulling him _away_ from, and what he sees can't possibly be real. A massive furry man-ape looking beast towers over them even from a slight distance, bearing down on them quickly. In no more than a few more strides of its bulky legs it's nearly on the path with them, coming in at a hard angle. Ajay just barely manages to haul him off to the side and into the brush before it comes crashing by, its massive footfalls shaking the very ground beneath them as they roll into the foliage.

He thinks perhaps it’s merely moving through on some rage-filled warpath, that maybe it hasn't noticed them in truth. The behemoth stumbles to a halt, however, and whips around with it’s big arms swinging. Pagan gasps, his hand flying to his mouth as he gets a better look at it in its moment of stupor. It looks more man than ape, with gray patchy fur and an almost eerily familiar-looking face. Where has he seen this thing before?

The monster trudges along in a slow circle, barking out a guttural groan in threat to its hidden prey. It sniffs the air with it’s great mouth open, slack-jawed as it slobbers on itself. When it hears that soft little gasp behind the nearest tree it bellows out a great, gurgling cry and swipes out with its heavy hand.

Ajay leaps atop him just in time to dodge the incoming fingers, thicker than his arm and frighteningly long, and the boy crushes him into the dirt to shield them from the incoming branches and debris that are smacked loose from the tree. The behemoth grips at the trunk of it, feet above their heads, and with a great yank manages to crack the thick trunk as it groans in almost pained resistance.

“We gotta run,” Ajay hisses, pure fear in his eyes, “that's a fucking yeti.”

The feel of his body, strong and lithe and straddling over him with surprising strength would excite him much more in any other setting. His rucksack wobbles on his back, heavy and precarious atop him. Here and now, it's reassuring to have him close as their chests heave with anxious breaths, even as they’re crushed together.

“A yeti?!” Pagan keens in disbelief, his trembling hands fisting into Ajay's sweat-soaked top.

He shouts this a little too loudly, and the yeti shakes at the tree it's still grasping, evidently trying to bring it down to get to them. It barks out another frustrated gurgle and pulls with all its might, and Ajay gets the bright idea to hurl the closest fallen branch towards it. The branch arcs high, leaves frushing in the air as it sails towards its wrinkled face. It's not a solid plan, but it's a convenient option.

His shot lands, and the beast stumbles back in surprise as it is assaulted by an onslaught of leaves and sharp wood. Ghale rolls off and away in an urgent slide, pulling Pagan with him for a moment as he’s still clung tightly to the boy's shirt, and together they heave each other up.

“Run!” Ajay urges, shoving him along as he tucks tail and ducks through the underbrush out onto the road.

“Which way?!” he yelps, being propelled directly towards the fork in the road.

The yeti finds this a convenient time to swipe the branch from its face and take another whack at the tree it's been dismantling. It finally cracks the trunk, sending the wooden giant crashing down from the canopy as all hell breaks loose. The path it's falling, they have no choice but to veer right to dodge the incoming trunk and falling branches.

“Decision's made for us!” the boy yelps, picking up the pace and dragging Pagan along by the arm.

The yeti doesn't immediately give pursuit, likely stunned by the impact of the felled tree, and they take this cover to put as much distance as they can between them and the behemoth.

They run, and run, until Pagan's legs nearly give out under him and he tumbles to a stop, skidding and rolling into the earth. Ajay staggers a few feet before he realizes his partner has fallen behind, literally, and he doubles back to help him up onto his feet again. Both of them collide, hanging off of each other and panting raggedly, each soaked with his own sweat and ruddy with the dirt they've been scrabbling through.

“You okay?” Ajay huffs, his weight heavy against Pagan’s broad chest as he clings to him, downright dizzy from exhaustion.

The closeness of him twinges something in his heart, sends a sort of poignant ache all through him.

“I don't hear it any more, I think it gave up and fell back,” he says, clutching the boy's shoulders beside the thick straps of his rucksack.

“You took a pretty heavy fall, Pagan,” he asserts, pulling away just a little to look him over, and he can see the blatant concern in his eyes, “come on… let’s find somewhere to lay low. Gotta be a cave nearby, we're in the right area if the map is right.”

And so the two of them stumble through the trees towards the sloping hillside before them, carefully wandering off of the beaten path. It isn’t long before they come across a little snarl of vines concealing a small little cave, just big enough for the two of them to squash together and huddle up. It's close enough to their supposed destination that it'll make a good stop to waylay at for the evening. By now Pagan has dissolved into something near manic hysteria, teetering on the edge of an anxiety attack. He signed up for an expedition to track down two MIA tomb raiders, not a game of cat and mouse with a twelve foot-tall yeti.

This trip may very well be the death of him. What a way to go.


	3. Chapter 3

Ajay sweeps aside the vines, gently looping them together to keep them out of the way, and he ducks into the little cave with flashlight in-hand. A quick cursory check earns the all-clear, and Pagan leans in when he's made space for him, his eyes narrowed as he inspects their safe space for the evening.

“This is certainly no tent or dry cave floor, my boy,” he muses warily, “well. It's dry. And it’s a cave. But. Do you think there's room for both of our sleeping bags in there?”

Ghale squints, sizing up the place with heavy scrutiny. He folds his arms and shakes his head.

“No. You're right. It’s a tight squeeze. We could look elsewhere? Find a bigger space for us? Or maybe set up a lean-to somewhere?” the boy asks with a grumble.

Before rational thought can follow him and grant him clarity, Pagan blurts out the first thought that comes to his mind.

“Well, perhaps we could… share a bag?”

Ajay grows very still, considering this option, and Pagan certainly doesn’t miss the light flush that blossoms on his tanned cheeks. He ekes out a dry, teetering little giggle, completely misplaced for how rattled he's feeling. His partner swallows thickly, casting a side eye at him. Has he screwed up royally? The boy isn’t saying anything. He's just… brooding? Glowering? Stuffing something down? Poor boy.

“Yeah that-" Ghale says hoarsely, clearing his throat, “…that sounds like a real good plan. Besides, it's so hot. We might not even need the sleeping bag, right?”

“Right. Yes. I'll just… I'll lay mine down as padding beneath us, hm?” Pagan says with a cough, and he’s already tugging his sleeping bag out before Ajay can stop him.

Good god, he’s really going to do this. He thinks himself an impulsive imbecile, but then perhaps he's a genius, not an idiot. After all, hasn’t he been pushing back all these overwhelming feelings of affection for the boy? Hasn't he been drowning under every little smile, every gentle touch Ajay affords him? And if this is the alternative to suffocating anxiety in the face of that awful hell-ape bent on their destruction, well than this is _just fine_.

He hasn't realized that he's wheezing, or frozen mid-spread of his sleeping bag. Ajay rests a hand on his back, murmuring his name inquisitively, and god damn if he doesn’t just buckle face-first into the thing in defeat. His partner sighs heavily and crawls in after him, yanking at the vines to let them loose again. As they fall to conceal the waning daylight still glowing outside, he lifts his head to find the boy laying beside him, staring hard.

“You alright?” he asks, and _lord_ he's so close in this tight little alcove.

And for all the world, he means to say yes. What he says instead is:

“Ajay do you… _like me?”_

It doesn't take mental gymnastics for him to realize he's messed up before he even finishes his question. But Ajay, _dear Ajay…_

He laughs. Hard. Filling Pagan’s very soul with at once both unbridled joy, and sounding sourness. He's being laughed at, but god he loves it.

“Are you, what, ten years old?” the boy snickers, wiping a tear from his eye, and Pagan winces before he can continue.

“Ouch.”

“Nonono… oh fuck,” he sighs, “Pagan… of _course_ I do. It's taken you this long to realize it? I've been interested in you for quite a while. I just… didn’t know if you swung that way, yanno?”

The ground drops right out from underneath him, and then soars right back up to meet him like he's just fallen a great distance only to slam into reality again.

“I…. Uuh-“ Pagan stammers, and manages to eke out a high whine of “…since when?!”

Ajay laughs again and by god he vows to earn as many laughs in this lifetime and the next as he can. So suddenly, it’s the greatest noise he's ever heard.

“Honestly? The night you asked to crawl into my bunk when we were on the steamer, because you were drunk and cold. I told you no, but only because I didn't trust myself,” the boy shrugs with a lopsided little smirk, reaching out boldly to run his hand encouragingly up his back to fold over his shoulder.

“I did that?!” is all he can muster, and all at once his mouth feels far too try.

The press of Ajay's palm into his sweat-dampened shoulder is a tremendous weight that resounds in his chest. It tightens him up like rope winding round his ribs, and he chokes on his breath for a moment.

“Oh yeah. Real adamant about it but I finally got you into your own bunk and you crashed hard, and I stayed up almost all night thinking about what I would have done to you had you gotten your say and stayed in my bunk.”

His jaw drops, and he keens out a hoarse, throaty wheeze in response as those words kick right into the pit of his stomach.

 _“Oh Christ,”_ Pagan says on the tail end of a thick swallow, “Ajay, I-"

Ajay has him scooped up into his arms before he even knows what’s going on, and suddenly they're pressed full-body against each other. His fingers slide deftly up the column of his throat and come to hook beneath his chin, and with a gentle tug he finds his face being lifted to meet those deep dark eyes.

The first soft press of their lips takes his breath away, and he can’t help but to gasp softly at the heat of it. He can glean a million little words and emotions from the tender way the boy kisses him, and damned if he doesn't drink in the feel of him like he's starving in the desert heat. He's not sure which of them digs deeper first, but soon the two of them are tangled around each other, gasping and crooning between teeth-clacking kisses. _God_ it's sweltering in this little cave, but the intimate, clinging knot they've tied themselves into is perhaps the most refreshingly gratifying experience he's had in decades.

Gently, insistently, Ajay coaxes his mouth open, their tongues meeting in a delicate dance. What they have is made of purest hunger, of tender adoration. And he wouldn’t change it for the world.

“Pagan,” the boy huffs into his mouth as a subtle rock of his hips shows just how much this kiss has _really_ done for him, “can we?”

“Can we what?” Pagan asks hoarsely, _“here?”_

“Where else?”

_Oh god._

Much as he wants to say _yes, absolutely, please devour me how you see fit,_ his body has other plans. After the surge of adrenaline that's managed to carry him this far safely enough, he's all out of go.

“I'm, ah… shamefully _unprepared_ , if you catch my drift,” he admits sheepishly as Ajay smooths his hands up and down his back, “I need to sleep. Desperately. Just-… just for a little while, hm?”

Bless him, Ajay's face softens considerably and he pulls him back in for a more tender kiss that lingers til they're both nearly breathless.

“Me too. Don't worry about it,” the boy says with a wry little smile, “come here.”

And obey he does, eagerly wriggling into his partner’s open arms. He can’t give a damn if the weather is so humid that they stick together, both of them reeking of sweat. He can't possibly be bothered to put any sort of distance between them – not like he can anyhow in this confined little space. Right here, with his head cradled up to Ajay's chest, listening to his pounding heartbeat, he’s _home_ for a moment. They can reflect on what they are, and how they really, truly feel in detail on another evening. Tonight, it's just the two of them, brushed by death and nursing their sanity touch by touch.

-

Sometime in the night, Pagan is woken by a shifting in the little alcove. Still sleep-drunk and dazed, all he can do is murmur a slurred and garbled warning to whoever is moving about. The shuffling stops, and he finds a strong arm winding around his waist as a lithe body cradles up behind him. The heavy sigh that tickles the back of his neck sounds distinctly _Ajay,_ and his fears melt away with relief. Flush against the curve of his back as he is, he can feel the rigid, prodding pressure of what is unmistakably his erection.

He flushes with heat at the presence of that insistent nudging against his backside. And with shameful dread, he comes to realize he's just as stiff, practically aching. _God_ how long has it been since the last time he was this hard? Even shifting his hips against the tension of his trouser seam feels phenomenal.

“I'm sorry I woke you,” Ajay says, his voice low and rough like he's still groggy himself, “go back to sleep.”

“What were you doing?” he asks, his mouth dry with want.

“Had to take a leak,” he mumbles, pressing his lips into the nape of his neck so tenderly, “and then I came back in and saw you all blissed out, strong and sturdy and… well, this happened.”

Ghale punctuates his sentence with a slow roll of his hips and a twitch of his cock that leaves him slackjawed. He can't even form a proper response to that. How can he?! Any utterance will end up something like _fuck me sideways_ or _please stroke me off_ and Christ his resurrected libido is doing flips in his goddamn head…

But, actually…

“My boy, it, ah… seems like we have come to an impasse… perhaps we could,” he pauses to swallow back an embarrassing whimper as Ajay rolls his hips again, and Ghale finishes for him-

“Touch me. Please,” he whispers.

That strong, cunning hand of his comes snaking around to the front of him in pursuit of the waistband of his trousers. Pagan can’t do a damn thing but to hastily obey Ajay's plea, fumbling behind him blindly with a grasping hand. The boy pulls his hand back to guide him to what he seeks, and in all of a moment he finds his fingers closing around the surging length of him and _oh_. His pants are already down. He's heavy against his palm, and hot to the touch, and _christ_ this is actually happening right now.

Ajay hisses through his teeth as he feels him press his forehead against the nape of his neck, and he rolls his hips forward, rutting into Pagan's grasping hand.

“Yeah that's it. Just-… just like that, fuck,” Ghale purrs, all breath and pooling lust, sending shudders up his spine.

“Here, wait,” Pagan whispers, noting that he himself has been neglected in this awkward position.

With a rock of his own hips and a twist of his shoulders he’s turned himself around in the tight little alcove so that they’re face to face. Of course Ajay vocally protests the sudden lack of attention, but all it takes is a single kiss to shut him up as they collide again. He manages to shove down the waistband of his pants just in time to be met with seeking fingertips and the slow, tight squeeze of his partner's fist. An embarrassingly starved whine tears from his throat as he ruts forward intently, and Ajay tuts with a chuckle.

“Moan like that and you're gonna bring the yeti right to us,” he chuckles, “can you be quiet for me? Or at least, a _little_ more quiet?”

 _“Christ_ , my boy, not when you—when you keep -ah! _Squeezing_ like that!” he chokes.

Now it's Ajay's turn to silence him with a press of his lips, and he loses himself in their gasping revelry as his seeking hand finds purchase in the dark once more. The two of them find their rhythm rather easily, with Ghale leading the dance. It’s obvious the boy has had much more prior experience, with his wily little twists and pulls. Somewhere along the way, his partner stops, even as Pagan allows him to rut into his fist eagerly.

“Not enough for you? Not into it?” Ajay whispers as he pushes Pagan's hand away.

“Whasswrong?” he murmurs drowsily.

“You lost it a minute ago.”

 _“Oh_. That I did,” he flushes with shame as he tunes in with his own body again, “ah… I may have a bit of repressed stage fright.”

He doesn’t have to see Ajay's face in the dark to hear the disappointment evident in his voice when he speaks again after a long, uncomfortable silence.

“We'll stop then. Another time.”

“Ajay, roll over.” Pagan growls, and mercifully the boy does, without any sort of complaint or question.

He must have some inkling of what's coming. When his partner has settled back against him, he cradles up close and nudges his nose along the short hairs on the back of his neck. The smell of him is comforting, even if it is a new thing, and Ajay shivers against the sensation.

“Don't worry about me. I want this more,” he rumbles against the boy's sweat-dampened flesh as his fingers dance down the line of his hipbone slowly.

If he can’t perform himself, he'll certainly be happy to show Ajay some appreciation. He'll give him that praise, he’ll worship at his altar. Funny how brushes with death can shove two people so close together, he muses.

By the time he gets ahold of him again, Ghale is right back up to snuff, raring to go, and _oh_ how nice it must be to be young and resilient.

The sweet, shuddering croon that leaves his lips is one of softness, of shyness. Almost a whisper in their dark little nest, but he hears it. Pagan takes a page from Ajay’s book, and twists his wrist just so as he strokes tightly down to his head, and he sputters in response.

“Yeah. _Please_ oh fuck,” he huffs, clawing a shaky hand down Pagan's forearm and then back up again, “Good, so good.”

God _damn_ the things his voice alone is doing to him. Soon enough he's prodding into the boy's backside intently, riding the friction each time he draws his hips back. The way Ajay’s back arches just so against him, he’s nudged up under his backside, inadvertently keeping him steady as he shamelessly rolls his hips against him. The surge of hot pleasure pooling in the pit of his stomach is profound, and he can’t keep himself from groaning into his ear, low and gravely.

The boy's hips snap forward urgently as he curls his hand around the slick tip of him, and he draws a cry from his lips that echoes through the little alcove. Already, he's swelling in his grasp, twitching eagerly as his climax coils tight inside him, and Pagan isn't far behind, now eagerly rocking his hips in fluid rhythm to meet Ajay's backwards thrusts. If he can just build them up together, push them over at the same time…

“Ohdamn, a-are you…?” Ajay finally chokes out breathlessly, “are you hump-"

 _“Yes._ Keep moving. _Please,”_ Pagan manages to stutter out, biting down gently on his partner's shoulder to keep in a particularly loud moan, “I’m so close. I want to come with you.”

“Fuck. Thighs, my thighs,” he hisses, his voice wavering as the tension builds higher, ever higher in him.

Ajay arches just so, changing his position so that Pagan finds himself slotting between his thighs, up against his ass, and that tight squeeze made slick by his own pre-come is _maddeningly_ good. Ghale croons something about being close, almost unintelligible through the strangled moan he yelps out.

In all of a handful of thrusts like this, their sweat-dampened bodies sliding feverishly in their heat, the both of them blow apart one after the other. His lover goes stiff with one final, sharp rut into his fist and he strokes him through his climax as he spills his hot seed over his palm, through his fingers, _on their sleeping bags_. Pagan shudders through his own spasms as his thighs clench tight around him, milking him of his own blissful release.

When at last their hips stutter to a stop, the two of them fall boneless to the floor, slumped into each other in a panting heap. Ajay has just enough energy to roll himself over and drag Pagan into his encircling arms, and as the boy pulls his face to his chest he nearly weeps with relief. His lover is out before him, and he follows quickly after him, chasing his afterglow into a deep, wonderful sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

May 30th, 1940

Ajay wakes long before his partner, curled up in the sticky heat of this little alcove and absolutely _drenched_ in sweat. Behind him, Pagan is cradled up to his back and whuffing softly into the back of his neck. It should be adorable, and he should be melting for this shiny new _thing_ of theirs, but he's _actually_ melting. Literally. Soaked in his own sweat, and probably Pagan's too, and _eugh_ , there's dried-up spunk on the sleeping bag and on _him_. Lovely as this is, sans the mess they've made of themselves, he needs some oxygen.

Peeling Pagan’s arm off of him is easy enough when he's nothing but pliable dead weight, in a deep exhausted sleep he _wishes_ he could join him in. The hard part is maneuvering himself to leave their little hole without waking him up. He was able to do it last time, but Min hadn’t been sprawled out and quite so _clingy_ last time. With daylight filtering through the vine cover on the doorway, it's easier to see what he's doing this time than it was in the dead of night earlier.

Just as he slides into a crouch and gets his hands around the vines, his lover snorts himself awake with a confused little murmur.

“Mmwha- darling?” Pagan grumbles, and he hears him sitting up behind him.

“Going to get some fresh air and clean up. Go back to sleep,” Ajay whispers over his shoulder.

Pagan reaches out to him and settles a hand on his lower back, sliding softly in little affectionate circles, and he makes some soft noise of rejection.

Something snuffles his hand where it's curled around the thatch of vines, in big, blustery breaths.

“No I think I should be getting up as well. Better to get this mission moving before we’re waylaid again for too long,” Min says, his voice still low and gravelly from his drowse.

“Maybe you're right,” he chuckles, and his brain catches up to him and _something sniffed his hand out there._

_Something is out there._

“Pagan, hush for a minute,” Ajay hisses, reaching back with his other hand to still him.

Against his better judgment but with no better idea, he leans forward and pries the vines open just the tiniest bit to peer out into the jungle. He half-expects to find a hungry cat, or an inquisitive ape, furious that they hijacked its little hideaway. What he finds instead is – _nothing_. Not a soul. Nothing at all. Was he imagining things?!

“That's… weird,” he says, slumping back into the den and finding himself captured by Pagan’s waiting arms.

He lets him draw him into an embrace, crushing him back against his chest, but he can’t bring himself to look away from the vines. Shouldn’t there have been a shadow blocking the weak sunlight anyhow? Whatever would have sniffed him would have been large enough to cast a shadow, for how strong those breaths were.

“What was it? Should we stay here?” Min murmurs in his ear as he presses little kisses up and down his neck, not a care in the world, clearly.

“Something sniffed my hand when I was holding onto the vines. But there's nothing out there that I could see. I'd have heard it leaving you'd think.”

Pagan hums against his shoulder, working his hands in soft, tender circles up and down his torso where he's clutching him up. Admittedly, at this point he'd be happy to stay here for hours and spend time exploring each other in full detail. But that’s not why they're here. He can lust after cranky old archaeologists when he's found what he's come for.

“Let's go,” Ajay sighs, pulling himself away from Pagan despite the noise of obvious protest that follows in his wake, “We have to keep moving. I wanna get this expedition over with and get my ass home to America. But first I want to bathe. Somewhere. Somehow. I'm a mess after last night.”

Together they gather up their packs and roll up the sleeping bag, even as Pagan mopes like a wounded puppy. Apparently he's said something wrong, if the screwed-up look of glowering consternation he’s getting as he pulls himself from their little hole tells him anything at all. No matter. They've come here for business and business only. What happened last night, they can talk about later. But they can’t afford any more distractions. Not with a yeti still somewhere out there in the jungle, probably still pissed that they gave it the slip.

“After you, Mister Ghale,” his partner says curtly, saddling up with his pack on his shoulders.

That's that then, he figures. Things will be quick and easy from here on out, he hopes. He’ll shoulder the brusqueness for now and deal with it later.

-

Three miles uphill – a much further march than they had originally anticipated – they rejoin the river at the top of what should be a waterfall, according to the map. What they find instead is the great maw of a cave yawning from a steep, craggy cliffside. It looks as though at some point this place had indeed been a body of water, this aforementioned underground tributary.

“Is this it, do you think?” he turns back to Pagan who is clutching the map and grumbling to himself rather loudly, “didn’t you say it'd be somewhere around here? This looks right, sans the obvious waterfall that I'm neglecting to see. This riverbed is dry as hell.”

“We are precisely where we’re meant to be, boy,” Pagan sighs, “we've followed the map to a T. And that blasted yeti back there even led us right down the proper fork in the road yesterday, apparently. Perhaps we’re better off without the whole river business anyhow. Much less soggy this way.”

Ajay turns back to throw an incredulous glare at his partner, raising an eyebrow in question. Is he really this daft?

“Where are we going to get water to drink, now? Hm? We didn’t pack extra skins because we thought we'd have a supply of fresh water down in the caves,” he rolls his eyes, “now what will we drink?”

“… _oh_ , yes, I suppose that's problematic,” Min mumbles, studying the map with great scrutiny instead of looking at him.

“Did you learn _anything_ in the field when you actually _worked_ for a living?” Ajay finally snaps, his worry rising right up over his self-control and smothering him, “or did your assistants bring you whatever you wanted while you toiled away in shady tents and pored over paperwork and clay pots?”

Pagan visibly recoils at the insult hurled right at him, and he folds the map in his hands with a sudden calm poise that rolls over him like storm clouds. He lifts his eyes to meet his glare now, looking the picture of careful detachment.

“Boy, I _told you_ I wasn't qualified for expeditions like this,” he says, metering his words, “it was your sole responsibility to compensate for that and you consented willingly. I was brought on this trek for my less than substantial knowledge of what we're seeking, and why. Not _how._ ”

“And now we're going to dehydrate and shrivel up in the caves, when we're already sweating off twice as much as we're drinking. Good job,” Ajay snarls, crossing his arms and turning away.

This heat, this exhaustion, is tearing him apart. He may or may not feel the tiniest bit guilty, but their lives are now on the line, and shouldn’t that count for something?

“Ajay…” Pagan sighs, and he hears him take a few steps toward him, “neither of us could have known this river would be dry, against all logic. Neither of us are at fault here, not truly.”

His shoulders slump under the weight of his pack and the guilt that rushes through him. His partner closes the distance between them and settles his big hand on his shoulder firmly, and he wants to lean into that touch as much as he wants to pull away. Why is he suddenly torturing himself like this? Rejecting such a good thing when it's offered up to him willingly?

In the end he shrugs Pagan's hand off, earning him a bitter whimper in response, and he shakes his head.

“You're right, I'm sorry. It's not your fault, or mine. We'll… we'll find a way to make due. Why don’t we poke around out here and see if we find anything to refill our skins with. Worst comes to worst we'll run halfway in there and come back out for more if we don't find anything _wet_ in there, eh?”

Min shrugs dramatically and casts his gaze aside. He looks entirely too fed up with this trek to be of any help at all, but they _need_ each other out here. They'll have to follow through and make it back to port together, even if they split at the end of it all and never speak again. Out here in the jungle, they're reliant on one another even if Pagan won't admit it. Ajay shifts his pack on his back and turns his gaze to the mouth of the cave, plotting where he'd like to go from here.

“Ajay. _Ajay-!”_ Pagan blurts suddenly, bringing him out of his deep thoughts, _“look!”_

He follows his line of sight, off to where he's pointing, and back off down the hill into the jungle he can see trees swaying unnaturally. As if pushed about by something. Something that he's got a strong gut feeling might be their predator from yesterday. The movement in the brush grows closer, and he feels his partner shrink up to his side, clutching at him fearfully.

“There’s no way that yeti would be pursuing us _still_. Right, dear boy? Certainly we were just paranoid this morning, and it gave up and went home yesterday and wouldn’t at all be pursuing us today, and-…” Min trails off as whatever is approaching suddenly stops a handful of yards away.

Ajay slaps a hand over his mouth and freezes up, holding his breath as the jungle goes quiet for a moment too long. Not even the breeze seems to be rustling through the trees now. The world is still. He swears he can hear that same faint huff of a snuffle like he did back at their little camp earlier this morning. Whatever is out there, it's scenting the air, perhaps. Pagan grits his teeth and swipes his hand away, and he turns to look at him in surprise for a brief moment. His eyes plead silently with an anxiety he hasn’t ever seen from the man before.

“Pagan, we should move,” he hisses as quietly as he can, feeling Pagan's fists tighten in his shirt, “I don’t know what that is, but I don't want to be here to find out.”

“It's so quiet,” is all Min can respond with, and he swallows so thickly he can hear it, “It's not even moving. Is it stalking us? Perhaps it's a jaguar? Or a leopard?”

As if rallied by the mere mention of the sudden stillness around them, a racket of branches cracking stirs up from the brush, and Ajay has Pagan hauled behind him by the strap of his backpack towards the cave without a second thought. Behind them he can hear some sort of otherworldly grunts snorting through the foliage. Pagan must hear it too, for he soon whips his head back to look.

“Ajay!” he yelps, and earns himself a hurried grunt as a _no_ , “no, no my boy, _look!”_

Into the clearing scatters a small herd of tapirs, ears pinned back and little feet propelling them urgently into the clearing as they grunt and squeal their way along.

“Really?” Ajay sighs, stumbling to a stop just inside the mouth of the cave, “fucking _tapirs?”_

“Heavens, we are far too paranoid for our own good,” Pagan scrubs his face.

That wily, self-pitying smile on his face nearly tears him in two. Why is he so mad again? Was he even truly mad to begin with, about that interlude in their cozy little nest?

“Are you thinking what I'm thinking?” he asks, tearing his eyes away from the twist of those lips to size up the little herd now spreading along the dry riverbed.

“That they came here looking for a drink and missed their opportunity?”

“…no. _Lunch_ ,” Ajay grins, and Pagan's eyes light up something fierce at the prospect of meat on the menu.

The closest tapir is only a handful of yards away, and seemingly unbothered by their presence nearby. True to what Pagan pontificated upon, they _do_ seem to be seeking water along the dusty riverbed, snuffling with their long snouts. He’d have gladly hunted earlier in their trip if they'd have been able to get any prey near them. Something about Pagan’s presence in the jungle, even when quiet as a mouse and waiting patiently for Ajay to duck out for a hunt, has seemed to repel almost every creature on this earth. Well. Except for the one they didn't _want_ to meet yesterday.

“Do you have a bow?” Min whispers loudly, negating the purpose of whispering altogether.

“Don't need one. They're close enough I can knock one between the eyes with a bullet,” he says as he fingers the handle of his revolver where it rests in his holster.

“Can we even eat tapir? I guess it's worth a try,” his partner muses, “I hope your aim is better than you’ve let on in prior occasions."

“Damn right it is,” Ajay grins as he carefully takes aim, “if I had wanted to hit Willis or your Russian friend, I'd have shot ‘em.”

Pagan grumbles quietly at the mention of his traumatized assistant and he takes the reprieve to line up a shot and pull the trigger. The tapir drops, but the rapport of the gunfire sends the rest of its herd squealing back into the trees in a frenzy. For show, he spins the gun around his index finger and blows across the muzzle, earning him a hearty snort from his partner.

“Perfect. I can make quick work of carving this up if you'll make a little fire, we can afford to rest for a minute while we-“

 _“RUN!”_ Pagan bellows, barely audible over the guttural, unmistakable roar of that god damned yeti.

Their prospective lunch forgotten, the two of them turn tail and scramble into the cave against all better judgment as the trees crash behind them.

“God damnit we should have known those tapir couldn’t make the fucking _trees_ move,” he heaves as he follows the line of the riverbed into the darkness.

Pagan fumbles just behind him to pull out his flashlight as the world around them grows darker and darker, and he can hear the encroaching thunder of the yeti's footsteps chasing them into the cave.

 _Oh, they're fucked_.

“Hurry up, for shit's sake I can't see anything!” Ajay pleads as he blunders into the cavern wall blindly with his shoulder and ricochets off, hands scrabbling blindly in the pitch black.

Min's flashlight illuminates the cave with an echoing _click_ just as they stumble on a branch in the road.

“LEFT!” he howls, grabbing Ajay's arm and hauling him sharply round the corner.

Moments later the yeti barrels by, flying right past them into the shadows as Pagan gets the flashlight off. He’s got them crammed into a little crevice in the stone barely big enough for either one of them to stand alone, let alone with their packs on. His arms are wound tightly around him, trembling for dear life as they both try to hold their ragged breaths in long enough to keep attention off of them. They can’t even see where it _is_ in here, save for the ominous echoes of its heavy breathing. They're stuck here indefinitely, unless it decides to tarry on and forget all about them. Of course, that certainly won't be happening any time soon he figures, by how close by it's lingering. It's not exactly like they're as quiet as they could be, panting raggedly, out of breath and out of shape as they are. Well. As Pagan is, anyway.

Pagan makes a high keening noise against his shoulder, pressing his face into the strap of his rucksack as he heaves out a gust of breath. Hot and sticky as they are, twice as tired from sprinting for their lives, this should really be more uncomfortable than it is. But having him so close, even in the face of imminent peril, brings him just that little bit of comfort he's needed so desperately since this morning.

The behemoth in the cave with them has gone quiet once again, save for the occasional heavy footfall or snuffling snort. Neither of them dare speak a word for fear of alerting it to their presence. Both of them seem to be thinking the same thing, however, as Min lifts his head at about the same time Ajay does, and they both turn their faces down the tunnel inquisitively.

Even with his eyes adjusting to the tiniest bit of light that's still filtering in, there's no way he's going to be able to make out any distinguishing features in the dark.

“Do you think… it's nearby?” Pagan all but mouths, close enough to his ear in the tiny little cranny that he can make out the syllables on his quiet exhale.

Ajay shakes his head in response, finding his fingers curling tighter around his hold on the back of Min's shirt. The yeti snorts again, and indeed it does sound further off than before. Perhaps they've really bucked it this time.

“Pagan. Flashlight,” he murmurs, and he feels his partner's hands releasing their vice grip on his back.

The arm still clutching at the flashlight snakes out from between his, and he finds himself holding his breath as he waits for that _click_ to illuminate the cave. Soon enough light floods the area around them in their little tunnel. He almost, _almost_ releases his breath when he sees before them only rock and toadstools. _Almost_.

With the slightest flick of Pagan's wrist, sweeping the wall for inspection, he catches two reflective eyes glinting in the dark about thirty yards back down the tunnel from whence they came. Those glassy, mirrored opals don't even squint against the sudden light. When they lurch closer, accompanied by one thundering footstep, Ajay tears out of their hiding place like a bat out of hell, only thinking to shout back to Pagan to _run!_

Sure enough, his partner’s footsteps echo down the tunnel after him, staying close behind in long strides.

“Take it! You lead!” Min pleads, and he feels the head of the flashlight whacking into his shoulder as they sprint, like some macabre baton toss that will somehow improve their chances of survival.

He snatches up the flashlight blindly, gets the beam aimed in front of him, and winds his way past jagged stalagmites and through clusters of cobwebs. Behind him he hears the unmistakable cock of a pistol, and Pagan fires off a few blind shots back down the straight tunnel as the muzzle flash breathes bursts of light down the cavern walls.

“Where the fuck do we go?! Did you hit it?!” Ajay yelps, keeping his gaze ahead when he's sure he still hears both his partner and the leviathan pursuing him, “the cavern is opening up! I see a fire up ahead, what the hell?!”

“I see it too! I don't know, I don’t care, boy, just fucking run!”

If they’ve been blessed by every God in the heavens, every deity watching over them, that flame might mean they’ve found the entrance to the channels they’ve been seeking all along. Luck has been on their side so far, (and misfortune but he's not acknowledging that right now), but they're going to have to go for it anyway, as that beast is not giving up.

With a sweep of Pagan's flashlight the two of them are able to canvas the cavern that opens up before them. Directly in front of them, across the expanse of the room, lies a carved door framed on both sides by hearty stone braziers. How the fire has remained lit when this cave system should have been filled with _water_ , he hasn't the slightest idea. Beside him, Pagan blurts out some sort of vague inquisition of whoever lit these braziers as they stumble further into the chamber.

Before he knows what he's doing, his partner bellows out a single word that instills a sudden spike of panic in him.

 _“Jump!”_ he bellows, and at that very moment he sees what lies before him.

All of fifty yards away is a narrow ravine bisecting the room with its deep, shadowy depths. The only way they're getting to that door and away from the beast is to cross it one way or another.

Really, he should stop to think _why am I jumping? Or what good will this do us? Or, most importantly, will I make the distance? Will Pagan?!_

What he does instead as he hears the yeti's gurgling roar break the stagnant air, is to hurl himself in a running leap straight off the edge of the fissure with as much speed as he can gather. Behind him, Pagan leaps as well, screeching with reckless abandon. Ajay barely brings himself to the other edge, catching it hard with his shin but managing to haul himself up with the added weight of his pack to throw around. He scrambled onto his feet and turns to face the yeti, just able to make out its hulking features as it skids to a stop in the dim firefight. Those reflective eyes shine like mirrors, staring him down, but the beast moves no further.

It could certainly make the jump if it chose to, he thinks as he sizes it up. If not for the leaping power of its surprisingly short legs, then certainly for the speed he's seen it gather before. But it does not pursue, does not move an inch. Merely, it's standing its ground he thinks.

 _Come back over here and you’re yeti chow_ , he thinks it must be saying as it garbles out an angry rumble.

“Holy shit, Pagan,” he laughs, turning to his partner-

_“Pagan?!”_

Dread spears through him, cold and suffocating. It pushes the air right from his lungs as he looks around wildly. He's not beside him. Not behind him. Not on the other side of the ravine, or being torn apart by the big behemoth still staring him down.

“…Ajay?” he hears Pagan squeak out, muffled and strained, and, for the first time he's heard it, absolutely _terrified_ , “my boy…uh, down here…”

Dropping to his knees, Ajay scuttles to the precipice, leaning over the edge as carefully as he can and _holy shit_.

Pagan is curled up on a teeny, tiny little outcropping out of reach, hanging on for dear life. His backpack has fallen, and he's devoid of his flashlight, but in the dim firelight Ajay can just make out his eyes. Big as saucers, brows knitted up, sheer unbridled terror in his gaze.

“…help,” Min whimpers.

_Ohgod you’re alive for now thank God._

“How the fuck did you manage that?!” is what Ajay manages to say instead of what he's thinking, “Did you _jump there?!”_

“ _Jump?!_ You didn’t hear me falling? Scrabbling to grab whatever I could hold on to on my trip down here?” Pagan quips, a surprising amount of sarcasm in his voice.

“Over the roars of this fucker? Not a chance. Holy shit. _Holy shit_. You're way too far down for me to reach you.”

Pagan peers up the cliff wall he's pressed up to, seeming to be sizing up the distance as though there was any doubt at all that he was right. For being scared shitless, he seems surprisingly unaffected otherwise, and for that he's grateful.

“I suppose you're right… it's… it's a long drop down, my boy. But!” he pauses, carefully peering over the edge again towards the dark depths of the ravine, “my flashlight fell. And I watched it fall. And I heard it splash. _Splash!_ There's water down there. Our river, perhaps! It sank a bit of a distance before it died, so perhaps it's safe for me to jump and let the water catch me. I'll try to lower myself down bit by bit if I can.”

“And what happens if you _don't_ hit water? What if it's a puddle? Or if you _miss?”_ Ajay asks, sounding more bitter than he's meant to.

“Then I die,” Min shrugs, and heaves out a shaky breath, “if you have any better ideas, I'm all ears.”

_Nope… nothing…_

His resounding and prolonged silence is all Pagan needs as an answer, and he hears his partner wheeze out an exhausted sigh.

“Don't fret, darling boy. You just keep on pressing through, alright? Through that door should be the home stretch to this scion of yours,” he sounds as though he's forcing the cheeriness into his tone, “I'm going to start moving now, and perhaps… perhaps I shouldn’t like to have you in here to hear if by chance I do fall to my dashed death.”

“Pagan-…”

 _“Go,_ Ajay,” he urges, spearing his own special breed of heartbreak right through his chest and withering him where he sits, “find somewhere safe to wait for me, if you choose. But go.”

Ajay hears the scuffling of movement in the ravine, probably Pagan inching himself to the edge of that little outcropping and trying to lower himself over. The noise alone, coupled with the bitter fear of indeed risking hearing whatever pitiful noise his partner may make should he miss his mark, has him scrambling off to the door. He pries it open with shaking hands, unleashing a strange blast of frigid air he doesn't stop to think about, and throws himself inside and pulls it shut behind him.

With the heavy stone door at his back, pressed shut tight, all notion of the cavern behind him quickly becomes nothing but a memory as he lets his dread and sorrow consume him. Even _if_ Pagan makes it out alive, how long will it take? How exhausted will he be from his journey? How cold will _he_ be?

It feels like a whole new world here beyond this door. Out there, it'd been sweltering. Hot enough to warrant leaving his thicker shirts in his rucksack. In here, it has to be at least a 20 degree difference, if not more. Like stepping out of a sauna and into an icebox. Shit, he can see his damn breath in here. Not that any of it matters, nor does he have anyone to share this experience with. For if everything still goes as planned, and he does in fact find this scion, he's not wholly convinced his parents will be somewhere in this cave system. Or if they are, they're likely icicles by now.

Ajay finds himself drifting off into a light sleep slumped against the chilly wall just beside the door, too exhausted and defeated to bother hauling himself along right now. His sleeping bag goes ignored where he's spread it on the cold cave floor. The deep darkness of a dreamless sleep washes over him, sucking him into the ravine of his spiraling thoughts just the same as poor Pagan out there. Wrapped up in the coat he'd packed and clutching his rucksack, he figures he'll warm up soon enough.

He'll just have to wait. It's all he can do. Wait, and dread, and ache.


End file.
